Take a slo-mo aerial tour of Earth. Released on June 5th, over two and a half million people have already watched Home. The message is potent: it is too late for pessimism. We can redirect our use of energy, of farming, of transportation. We can and must live a different paradigm.
Read more » http://snipurl.com/km0se
Permission is granted to repost in full or in part, with a link back to my blog. The film is free. The link is in my review. Enjoy ;-)
Factory food sickens humans, livestock and the environment
What we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the last 10,000. So asserts Robert Kenner's new film, FOOD, Inc., which opens nationwide June 19th. The vast bulk of food production is now controlled by just a few mega-corporations with one value: profit. Relying on genetic engineering, pesticides and antibiotics, factory food is cheap, requiring little land. But the external costs to our health, the environment and the natural food industry are enormous.
Director: Robert Kenner
Producers: Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
Co-Producer: Eric Schlosser
Released by Magnolia Pictures, with Participant Media and River Road Entertainment
93 minutes
FOOD, Inc. is the single most important film of the decade. Transcending hype and industry muzzling, the film exposes some of the cruel and unnatural aspects of industrial farms and food processing. It links epidemic rates of US obesity and diabetes with our intake of genetically engineered food.
NPR called it this summer's "suspense thriller."
The film condemns how workers and animals are abused. Illegal immigrants, who cannot complain about working conditions, comprise most of the workers at industrial food plants. They are vulnerable to raids and deportation. No corporate executives are arrested.
Well researched and well scored, the film debunks the pastoral fantasy spin. Industrial food is not grown, raised or processed on a farm. The animals see no sunshine, are kept immobile in cages, and are genetically or chemically modified. Those that are somewhat mobile are bioengineered to plump their bodies faster than their bones and muscles can support. They flop helplessly to the floor when trying to move.
Read the full review, with images, at http://snipurl.com/k4s6d
If Lou Dobbs could wave a magic wand and make all those pesky undocumented workers disappear, he'd do it in a heartbeat. And while that might be a triumph for law and order, it would also be kind of a hollow victory--pretty soon our empty stomachs would begin rumbling, and we'd be grumbling:
Who's going to pick our produce?
Who's going to pluck our poultry?
Who's going to chop up and stir-fry our chicken and broccoli?
Who's going to deliver it to our door?
Millions of illegal immigrants make enormous sacrifices-leaving behind loved ones and paying smugglers a fortune--to come to the U.S. and work long hours for low pay doing lousy jobs. You probably don't give that a whole lot of thought when you dial the Chinese restaurant down the block to order your won ton soup and lo mein.
Filmmakers Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou are out to change that with Take Out, a day-in-the-life saga about one of those guys you grab your bag of food from and hand a dollar to before you shut the door and forget his face. The film opened last Friday at the Quad Cinema in New York City, where Take Out takes place, and illuminates the lives of an ignored but integral segment of our population.
Take Out stars Charles Jang as Ming Ding, an illegal Chinese deliveryman who pedals his way through a drizzly day made more dismal still by ruthless loan sharks. Ming's morning starts with a bruising wake-up call from his debtors, who barge in to the cramped apartment he shares with umpteen other immigrants and demand that he come up with $800 in interest on the massive debt he owes his smugglers by the end of the day.
War, Inc. is a political satire that just opened in LA and New York, produced, co-written, and starring John Cusack, Hillary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Ben Kingsley, Dan Aykroyd.
Cusack plays Brand Hauser, a hit-man for hire who is deployed to the fictional country of Turaqistan to kill a Middle Eastern oil baron. Hauser's employer is Tamerlane, a secretive for-profit military corporation headed by the former US vice president, played by Dan Aykroyd. In this scene, Hauser receives his mission orders:
BRAND HAUSER: Turaqistan. What's the gig?
TAMERLANE CEO: Omar Sharif.
BRAND HAUSER: Omar Sharif?
TAMERLANE CEO: Yeah, CEO of Wuji Gas, the Yujigastani conglomerate. Terminate. Do do that voodoo that you do so well. You'll be working directly under the viceroy, just appointed by the president. His identity is still being withheld until further notice. It's on a need-to-know basis.
BRAND HAUSER: And no one needs to know.
TAMERLANE CEO: He asked for you personally.
BRAND HAUSER: What's my cover?
TAMERLANE CEO: Trade show producer.
BRAND HAUSER: Trade show? What show? What show? What show?
TAMERLANE CEO: Oh, it's going to be huge, Hauser. Tamerlane is sponsoring a trade expo, Brand USA. It's our big launch, bringing democracy to this part of the world. Plus, now that we've
bombed the shit out of them, well, there's a lot of rebuilding to do.
BRAND HAUSER: Shows a nice spirit.
TAMERLANE CEO: Well, somebody has to help these poor people. This moment presents a great opportunity for Tamerlane, and the United States, for that matter, not to mention the people of
Turaqistan. To top it all off, there's going to be a gala wedding! Isn't that great?
BRAND HAUSER: Seems like a pretty elaborate cover. I'm actually going to be responsible for all that shit?
TAMERLANE CEO: This is a historic moment, Hauser: the first war ever to be 100 percent outsourced to private enterprise. Tamerlane jets. Tamerlane tanks. Tamerlane soldiers. And to top it all off, a Brand USA Expo. It's your show, baby.
Excerpts from his Democracy Now interview on jump.
Well, I read Living Liberally's review of the film, "Juno," I have to say I profoundly disagree. I personally found the film to be attrocious, and instead of simply ranting in the comments, I decided to instead post a review of my experience watching the film. As a side, I would just like to say that I don't think the film portrays abortion in a good light, and doesn't really take a position, portraying the pro-Lifer as stupid, and the abortion clinic girl as sex obsessed and creepy. Besides that, abortion is literally reduced to her deciding not to go because "everyone is tapping" (even if this was just a cover for her being nervous, it still makes no sense, and her just getting nervous and running away adds nothing to the abortion debate). Either way, here is my review, and be warned, there are some spoilers:
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